Bilal Assad – Navigating Mental Health + Q&A
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of finding one's own willpower and acknowledging one's own potential to improve one's life. They also stress the need for professional help for mental and physical struggles, including the prevalence of the evil eye and conflict and negative emotions due to delusion. The audience is encouraged to pursue their dreams and not wait for anything.AI: Transcript ©
Bismillah Rahmat Rahim Alhamdulillah, Wassalaat was salaamu alaar
Rasulillah.
Brothers and sisters, tonight insha'Allah,
the topic is navigating
through mental health.
Now,
I know some Muslims
may switch off
when they hear the topic mental health.
And I've encountered
many Muslims,
who as soon as you say mental illness,
mental health,
they brush it off completely
as if it doesn't exist.
Or
they immediately resorted
to shaitan, jinn's possessions and the evil eye.
Nothing else.
Or
they say there's no such thing.
This is only lack of iman, faith,
lack of religious practice,
or it is a punishment from Allah.
Some Muslims,
because they don't understand this area very well,
may think like that.
Brothers and sisters, Alhamdulillah,
we have many scholars
in our time, scholars of Islam,
and scholars in science and psychology,
doctors,
medical doctors in neurology,
neuroscience,
and all
sorts, Alhamdulillah,
who belong to the Muslim nation, masha'Allah, the
Muslim community,
the Muslim Ummah,
who are at the forefront,
who have taught us, and, alhamdulillah, represent
this area of knowledge.
And what we're going to ask today are
questions like,
is mental health and mental illness a real
thing in Islam?
If it's a thing, is it just the
result of lack of iman or lack of
religious practice?
Or is there no such thing
that it is just a term made up
by the West and so called psychologists to
deter people away from religion and iman?
Is it that it's just, as I said,
jinn possessions, sehr and evil eye?
How do I deal with OCDs, obsessive compulsive
disorders, WISWAAS,
intrusive thoughts
that
overcome me and debilitate me. How do I
deal with depression,
anxiety, traumas, and grief?
Does everyone who feel this
means that something is mentally wrong with them?
Are they crazy?
Is it a punishment? Is it because of
past sins? Is it because we do sins
Allah punishes us?
We're going to address
all these points insha Allahu died.
Brothers and sisters,
mental health and mental illness,
I have you know, is not a new
thing in Islam.
It's been there from the beginning.
Scholars have spoken about it.
People like the great Imam Razi
and Ibn Sina.
Imam Razi was the first to establish a
psychiatric ward in 704.
704,
just a few
decades after the death of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam,
in Baghdad.
Imam Ibn Sina has a whole book talking
about the criteria
of how to diagnose someone with severe mental
illness and how to treat it.
People like Imam Ghazali,
who said,
I went into 6 months of depression, I
didn't know what the cause was. And Allah
assisted me, I went out of it.
Modern day Muslim religious figures,
who are also psychologists and professors in the
field,
I can name a few of them who
you can, Insha'Allah, refer to.
Doctor
Iyad
Al Qun Nabi.
Malallahu, reward him, speaks excellent English as well.
A professor in this area and a lecturer
on this area,
and he is also very well learned
in Deen and Islam. He has a YouTube
channel,
and masha'Allah,
very
prominent.
Professor Tarek Al Habib, again, another scholar of
Islam and a professor of psychology and psychiatry.
Among the scholars
of Islam, purely Islam, who also told us
about mental health and mental illness, sheikh Ibn
Usaymin,
said yes, it exists.
Sheikh doc doctor Sheikh Osman al Thameez.
And he added
that those who say that people with mental
illness is a result of weak iman is
not true. He said it's a sickness.
It's an illness. It's got nothing to do
with your iman. There are people who have
really high iman,
very strong religion,
but they go through it.
Among many other scholars,
in fact, I did not come across any
Muslim scholar, as far as I know, who
denied the existence of mental illness.
And the only difference is
they included
spiritual and religious
treatment
to the mental illness along
with the modern day
therapy treatment
attached to it.
Both of them together.
They said don't leave the deen out, the
faith and the reliance upon Allah, and the
things which the prophet Muhammad
taught us
in managing
our spiritual,
mental,
physical
health.
And many studies
today have mounted up
recommending
spirituality
and attachment to God.
Of course we say Allah, God.
And religion
to be included as part of therapy. There
are more studies now who
and experts in the field who are recommending,
including
the issue of spirituality
and faith in God in
in treatment, in in therapy.
And many
have found that there is a link
between prayer,
mediation meditation,
faith in a higher power, Allah,
has overall better mental health
outcomes and lesser rates
of suicidal tendencies.
Many many studies are like that, alhamdulillah.
And some of my sources, other than the
Islamic sources,
I usually get amazing
articles and studies. A lot of them are
peer reviewed, if you know what I'm talking
about, from PubMed
under the National Center For Biotechnology Information,
well researched biomedical article entries.
So So those of you who know what
I'm talking about, it's a really good place
to look at amazing
studies on this area.
Brothers and sisters, where does it all start?
Where does mental illness start, and what is
it?
First of all, brothers and sisters, mental illness
is not just
an uncomfortable feeling
of waswas
and feeling depressed or feeling anxious or feeling
fear,
or feeling slight
unease,
or
getting some intrusive thoughts, as I said before,
it's not just that.
Everybody goes through some form of depression, some
form of anxiety, some form of fear and
trauma, we all go through it.
In fact, it's in the Quran.
In the Quran,
Allah
gives it different names.
In the Quran, you will find all these
already there.
Sometimes it's called
ham,
worry.
Zam,
claustrophobia.
Hashiya,
a type of
fear.
Khawf,
a different type of fear.
Allah says to the prophet
your chest
constricts.
So it's a it's
it's it's a symptom of anxiety when you
feel your chest constricting.
Allah says
They used to say hurtful words, the prophet
and he would get his chest would tighten,
but only because he cared so much about
them. A lot of people who care a
lot, they have empathy.
They feel these things. They're actually amazing people.
Sometimes the Quran says,
It's a deep type of
uncomfortable
stress that or or uncomfortable
feeling that a person feels on their chest.
That's why Allah says when people enter paradise,
Allah
says,
We rip out
rip out
whatever there was in their chests
of ril. Ril
is
sometimes can be negative or positive. It's usually
negative, but it's uncomfortable,
it hurts you, it pains you.
Sometimes it can develop into
hate,
jealousy, envy,
can sometimes result in
just disappointment and so on. So Allah says
we take all of we * all of
that out of their chest.
And if you realize, brothers and sisters, right
up to this point, the Quran does not
mention qalil,
the heart. He mentions chest. Every discomfort,
all of this is always related to the
chest, not the heart.
In the Quran,
there are three names that refer to the
heart. I want you to remember this because
I'm gonna refer to it. Number 1, alqalb,
the heart.
Number 2,
sodur,
the chest.
And number 3,
foad
or afida.
Foad means the burning energy of the heart.
And fada comes from the word fada, which
means literally to barbecue.
Shaawi,
like on the,
barbecue, literally like the barbecue. When you barbecue
meat, The heart can have show we can
have a barbecue sensation, energy of heat.
Al Kalb is the inside divine moral that
Allah has given you within yourself. That is
your faith, your true belief, your trust in
Allah. The sadr
is right outside the heart.
I want you to imagine it, the great
scholar, Abdul Qayyim,
in his book,
ada waddawa and madarajas salikin, he says,
imagine the heart and the sadr like a
house
that's locked up, that's the heart.
And the courtyard
outside.
Intruders may come into the courtyard,
bad things may come to the courtyard, and
good things may come to the courtyard, maybe
good guests.
And maybe bad people come into the courtyard,
thieves.
The stronger you have the security around your
house, the less likely you will allow or
those thieves will come in.
And you have the choice to open for
them,
if you want them, or to close the
door. And the good ones, you open for
them. That's your heart.
The difference
is that if you feel uncomfortable with an
intrusive feeling,
but your heart rejects it,
then know that, alhamdulillah, you're okay.
And it is just in the courtyard,
just on your chest.
For example,
let's say
you
are
stuck with a sin of some sort,
and you're not comfortable with it,
and it annoys you,
and you're always worried when is it gonna
go,
And you're embarrassed to talk about it.
That means
that, alhamdulillah,
your faith in your heart
is still safe.
You have not allowed
the comfort of this sin, the desires to
enter into your heart yet.
You're still wrestling with it.
And the example that I can give,
it is in the hadith, which is in
Abu Dawood
and Nasai
and Imam Ahmed. It's authenticated by Al Albani.
That a group of companions came to the
prophet
and said to him, You Rasool Allah,
there are thoughts
that come to our mind and upon our
chests,
which if we were to tell you what
they are,
we would rather you light up a fire
and throw us in that fire
than to tell you what these thoughts are.
Intense whispers,
very uncomfortable.
They might come to them during their prayer.
They might come to them during their Quran,
during when we're there, the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. So it's in good environments.
And the response of the prophet
was very interesting,
better than any psychologist or therapist you can
ever imagine.
He responded very positively
and with a cheerful smile as if he
was celebrating.
He said to them,
Awatazidoon azaddik?
Really? Have you reached the point where you're
feeling like that?
As if he was waiting for this,
that it is an achievement,
a forward achievement.
He says,
Alhamdulillah,
thanks to God Allah
and gratitude that he has
reduced
the strength and power of the shaitan
to mere whispers
then he said something amazing
the kasarihul
iman
That, what you just described,
is the true sign
of true Iman, of true faith.
Do you now see
the opposite of what you were thinking before?
We used to think something is wrong with
my iman.
Perhaps someone came along and told you that.
Perhaps it was your parent,
ignorantly,
all your life telling you that.
Perhaps it was an imam who didn't really
know much about the issues of
this matter.
Could be anybody.
Of course, the more knowledgeable they are, the
less you'll hear those words.
But Rasool sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
he was very positive and optimistic. He says,
that is the truth of iman.
Now, when you say something like that to
someone, that is the absolute first step to
healing
and to minimizing
OCDs,
obsessive compulsive disorders.
Your mental health will be navigated through
easier,
not completely perfect, but easier.
People with this type of thinking and faith,
studies have shown that they are able to
navigate
quicker,
they're able to deal with mental illnesses
better,
Not the best, but better?
Certainly.
So he didn't tell them
to wrestle
or to fight
or to respond
to the whispers. Did you hear any of
those words? He He said, alhamdulillah, the shaitan
is very weak. He just makes you whispers.
And then, alhamdulillah, it's a sign of your
iman. He did not tell them do this
or do that.
Nothing.
And that is the best way to combat
intrusive thoughts and feelings.
The idea
is to recognize
that they are truly intrusive feelings and thoughts.
That's all they are. Number 2,
they are only imagined
by you.
You are
creating
a world in your own mind about it.
Number 3 most importantly,
the idea is not to avoid it,
don't fight it,
don't try
to read more about it,
and try to find what's wrong with you.
I'll even go further than that, and this
is what the scholars said.
If they are intrusive thoughts about your god,
about Allah, about Jannah, about hellfire, about the
Quran,
So long as you are uncomfortable with it,
it means your iman is okay.
This is shaitan's whispers, and he's just coming
to your courtyard. Don't let the thief
in. How do you deal with him?
So long as your heart is safe, don't
even give him attention.
Don't even say
Astaghfirullah.
I've seen it sometimes in Salah.
Some people, they have this obsessive compulsive thought.
Instead of ignoring it, they try to deal
with it
with good heart, but that's the wrong approach.
So they hear a hadith which says, if
you get whispers, turn to your left and
spit 3 times.
And say
3 times. 3
times. That is true, but that's just once
in a while. Rasool Sartan didn't say do
it all the time. It's just once in
a while.
If it gets really bad, once in a
while.
But sometimes I see brothers,
every raka, maybe 4 or 5 times, they
turn.
I remember one brother, I stopped standing next
to him.
I said, I
don't need more of your spit on me.
So this becomes a problem.
Don't even say staghfirullahalazin.
Why? Because you are giving them importance. The
whole idea is you do not give it
importance. I'll give you a very simple example.
Imagine it like
an annoying
person that's standing in front of you,
And that annoying person
cannot stop talking.
He cannot shut up.
Talk, talk, every time you go, and you
cannot get rid of this person, it's just
a yapper.
Yaps and yaps. If you respond, they'll continue
yapping.
If you reply, they'll talk more. If you
tell them to stop, they'll keep going. If
you give them attention, they'll be happy. What's
how do you get rid of that yapper?
Focus on the task that's important to you
now. What are you going to do? What
should you be doing right now? Just do
it. And focus your attention on that, and
let the person continue to talk. Let them
come in and out. No worries. They're only
coming into your courtyard, and they'll go.
As time goes on It doesn't happen like
that, brothers and sisters. Everyone wants a very
quick solution.
It didn't happen overnight.
And it's not going to go away overnight,
but slowly,
you will find it diminishing. And I'm not
talking about people who I'm not saying you
will never get Weswas.
Waswas was was was was was was was
was was was was was was was was
was was was was was was was was
was was always you're gonna get was was
was. You got a brain that keeps going.
You're gonna have Swisswase.
But the idea I mean, Swisswase only works
for certain
reasons, but when it becomes obsessive compulsive,
it debilitates you.
Let it come and go. Don't even fight
it.
Al Quran
talks about
lom.
Lom
is when you blame yourself.
There's a good blaming and a bad blaming.
Blaming yourself means that when you look at
your past sins or your bad choices,
and you say,
I take responsibility
for it,
that's actually healthy.
And then you say, what can I do
about it?
If I can do something about it, alhamdulillah,
I'll do it. If I can't, I ask
Allah to forgive me.
Or it's in the past now, let's move
forward,
and things will be better.
Laum can be good, to blame yourself. But
to blame yourself for something that is irrational.
For example,
you may have been in hospital for a
loved one,
and they passed away, or something bad happened
to them.
The shaytan comes to you in your thoughts
and they say, I should have done this,
I should have done that, I could have
done this, I could have done that. You
know those thoughts?
They will never stop.
And if you were to think about it
properly,
every single thing you do every day
is prone to danger.
You sitting right now where you are,
there's danger, if you think about it.
Crossing the road, there's danger.
Going home, there's danger. Sleeping, there's danger.
How many times did Allah
save you from danger?
Millions of times.
Anytime it could have happened. So how do
you expect yourself to be perfect and strong
and super? The human being is weak.
Allah says in the Quran
The human was created weak.
We are meant to go through these mistakes.
One person said to me that my loved
one passed away. I wish I could have
done this or that, blaming themselves.
So I asked him a simple question.
If you were to turn back time and
go back to that moment,
and you knew exactly what was going to
happen,
and you had the power to do something
else, would you do
it? In an instant, he said, of course.
So that means
you can't blame yourself
because at the time you had no idea
anything could have happened.
And that helped him move forward, insha'allah.
Just change that mindset.
Allah
talks about
Halim,
very kind, compassionate and patient.
Every time he saw his people going astray,
his father going astray, his family going astray,
he had a habit of going, ah.
These are people with empathy because they care,
they think a lot about other people.
If only my father was like this. If
only my people would listen.
And so this is a sign of a
good person, actually.
The Quran mentions Hazan, sadness of the past,
nasab,
which means bodily
tiredness, wasab, which means sicknesses,
other people will harm you.
Allah says to
prophet
Muhammad,
you are about to overburden yourself
by feeling sorry for them that they're not
following the message. No. No. It's not your
responsibility. Allah says to him, you are nothing
but a messenger. You convey and either they
accept or they don't.
Focus on what your responsibility
is and what your control is.
Sometimes, some children, they want to change their
parents.
Or if I've heard, for example, sometimes children,
they say to me, teenagers,
my parents are getting a divorce.
And what can I do about it?
My answer to them firstly is,
it's not your responsibility,
it's theirs.
You didn't make them get married and you're
not the one who got involved in their
divorce.
So number 1, it's not your responsibility.
Don't try
to do this or that.
Number 2.
Don't take sides.
Number 3. Focus on your relationship with your
mom and dad.
And number 4.
Make dua for them.
Because when you take that on yourself, you
have no control over it.
What are your options?
My option is 1, 2, 3, 4. Choose
the best option. And what is within your
responsibility
and your boundary?
That's not your place.
For example.
Just giving you some examples.
Allah talks in the Quran,
We are all going to go through discomforts
and harms and trials in our life. And
fitna
fitna
means mischief, but it also means
cleansing.
Fitna is
when is the process that people
do when they get gold from the ground
and it's mixed with other properties. So it
goes through a process of heating,
so they can extract the pure gold out
of it.
Sometimes we need to go through that. And
I've seen people come out of tragedies, traumas,
hard
times, calamities.
Better
or worse?
What's the difference?
1 got support,
1 relied on Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and
kept going and changed their mentality,
the other one didn't have support
or could not
know how to deal with it.
Some people they say, is it punishment from
Allah?
The answer to that
is
any calamity that happens to you, brothers and
sisters, is neither a punishment
nor a
reward
in and of itself.
It's neutral.
So what determines it to be a reward
or a punishment?
It is your reaction.
It is how you react to it
that turns it into a punishment from Allah
or a reward.
From Allah, no evil, no pure evil comes.
Sometimes there's things that look bad to us.
But from Allah,
there's no pure evil that comes. If there
is something that happens with the permission of
Allah, and some of it looks bad to
us, know that it is a blessing in
disguise.
There is a door in there for you.
There are doors in there for you.
And I always repeat and remind my brothers
and sisters about Allah's names.
Allah's 99 names which He has revealed to
us, there are more. But these are the
ones he revealed to us in the Quran.
On top of it is name Allah, so
it's a 100.
Every name of Allah is positive.
Even the ones that sound negative.
For example,
if you remember from other talks, those who
are who are here, I'll ask you now
to test you.
What comes after the name see, they're put
in a particular order. What comes after the
name Adar?
Adar means the harmer.
That's one of Allah's names. The harmer.
He harms.
Sounds negative.
Adar. But what name of his immediately comes
after that?
Anafiya,
which means?
Benefiter. The benefitter.
So they're paradoxes. They almost contradict, or they're
opposites. Right?
They're polars.
Harm,
benefit. How can one be a perfect
harm and a perfect benefit at the same
time?
It means, the scholars tell us,
that Allah does not harm you unless He
wants to benefit you through it.
Some things you cannot benefit unless the harm
comes first.
Another name of Allah,
Al Hafid,
Al Raafi'ah.
The demoter,
down,
the promoter.
Again,
looks like a paradox, looks like a polar
meaning.
Allah will not demote you
except to promote you.
The prophet, peace be upon him, said,
Whoever
humbles themselves
for the sake of
Allah, steps on their ego, steps on their
arrogance
for the sake of Allah.
So you have the strength and you have
the power to oppress. You have the strength
and the power to show off. You have
the strength and the power
to look better than others, superior. Instead, you
step on it.
You humble yourself
and you remember what you were created from.
You and I were created from what? What
is that we're created from?
Right?
Remember what you're created from and what you're
gonna become. Humble yourself. Rasool Sallay says, whoever
humbles themselves for the sake of Allah, Allah
will always lift them.
Through humbleness comes your importance.
And this is when the hadith from
really comes into effect, when he said, if
Allah loves a servant of His, He tells
Jibril
Jibril loves him, and He tells the angels,
and the angels begin to love him, and
then his acceptance is placed on earth. Even
the enemy respects you.
The person who humbles I'm not talking about
the person who puts his head on the
floor for others to step on it.
That's not the same as humbling.
Humbling is when you have the power and
the ability.
But you
act
below your reality.
You
humble yourself to the level of other people.
Rasool
was like that.
And if you were to turn back time
and go back a 1,400
and something years ago,
those of you who have been in past
lectures, you will know the answer to this.
Where do you think is one of the
most likely places
to find
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam? If you were
to go back in time, you searched
for the messenger sallallahu alaihi wasallam. Where are
one of the
likely places,
if not the most likely, to find him?
Of course. Among the poor people. Just look
for a gathering of poor people,
and your chances are higher in finding the
proper peace be upon him. And when you
find him among the poor people, if he's
got his head down, it's not even easy
to
pick him out,
because he used to dress like
them. He wouldn't go and sit with the
poor people and dress better than them,
or sit higher than them
or act
more,
present than them.
He was with
them. So
so
whoever humbles himself will say, will Allah lift
You can see, brothers and sisters, through what
I'm trying to say here, these are all
healings.
These are all ways for your mental health.
Where does mental illness begin?
Does anyone know?
Big studies about this. And even the entire
sunnah
supports
this. For those of you who study the
seerah, the biography of the prophet you
will see through his actions,
just by working it out, where does the
likelihood of mental illness,
trauma
start in a person? If a person grew
up with this, where do you think it
all started?
In their childhood.
Most of it is in the childhood.
The childhood.
Now the studies have mounted more and more
and more. It's established.
Most of it starts in childhood.
How?
How
and why?
Have you heard
of a term called neuroplasticity?
Yes? Hands up if you heard of or
it's also called brain plasticity.
Yes. Some of you. Well done, masha'Allah.
Literally, brothers and sisters,
the brain that you and I have,
you and I have control
over
changing it in the way we want.
It's not an easy task, but we can.
And you can teach your children
that they are able to change their brains.
Just give them the example of Legos.
You can
build the Legos,
dismantle the Legos, rebuild them in a different
way, change parts of it here, like Legos,
like blocks of Legos,
our brain is.
Right inside, there are little tiny channels.
Alright? Neurons connect to other neurons.
Allahu 'alam, 30,000,000,000, 300,000,000,000, I don't know, many
billions of neurons.
They connect and they make highways and and
roads.
And they grow. Like these little roots, they
grow,
and they make new bridges and connections.
When you develop habits,
these channels grow. Develop other habits, these channels
grow. You stop certain habits, the channels get
less. Other channels grow. Your brain gets rewired
every time.
It's a beautiful study.
And Allah,
he tells us that in the Quran.
He tells us
that we are responsible
for what our brains decide.
But the ones we're responsible for is the
one right at the front of our brain
not the rest of our brain.
Does anyone know
at what age
the child's brain is almost fully complete
close to adulthood. At what age do you
think it's almost fully complete?
7.
7? Okay. Good. About modern studies tell us
about 6. Could be 7, around that age.
It's true.
That means the way the child grew up
with their parents and their environment
and their experiences,
there are those channels in the brain have
already been set
at 6 or 7 years old.
After that, the brain starts developing a different
way. When you reach puberty, guess what starts
to develop in your brain?
The front part of your brain.
Anyone know the name of the front part
of the brain that develops after puberty? Prefrontal
cortex. Prefrontal cortex. That keeps growing until about
25 years old. That's the place responsible for
judgment, decision making, fears, and so on and
so forth. Rationale and all that, making decisions
through it.
Allah says in the Quran,
If he does not desist
from his oppressive and wrong actions,
But in general to all of us, the
human who oppresses and does wrong,
we shall take him by his forelock
on the day of judgment.
A lying sinful forelock.
Forelock here is the frontal cortex responsible for
decisions. Allah called it lying and sinful because
we have control over that. Now what affects
that? Our brain development.
Now when you understand this, brothers and sisters,
you have a bit more empathy on yourself.
You say to yourself, subhanAllah,
my upbringing was a little bit like this
and like that. Can I change it? Yes.
Insha'Allah, you can. Ibn Qayyim
writes in his book,
for the divine seek for the seeker of
the divine. And a doubt would thaw out
the sickness and its cure.
He mentions
how
habits develop, good and bad habits. So he
uses the example of sins.
He says every bad habit, every sinful habit
begins with a thought.
A what?
A thought.
Whisper comes and goes. If you catch that
thought and hold on to it, it turns
into an idea.
If you hold on to the idea
and that repeller, it turns into
a plan.
If you hold on to the plan and
you don't repel it, it turns into
an action.
If you repeat the action,
the less
you feel sensitive towards it and the more
normalized it becomes,
then it turns into a habit.
And what do habits turn into if you
don't deal with them?
Addictions.
Now,
the reversal
is the same way.
Come up with a thought to counter
it, then get an idea, plan it, do
an action, get into the opposite habit again
and again and inshallah it'll go away.
Example.
A young person
reaches puberty
and the hormones begin to
ignite,
sexual hormones.
A friend at school says
there are websites you can look at to
satisfy
your desire.
He goes and thinks, my parents watch me
everywhere, they've got this, I then he gets
he goes, how am I going to do
it? I've got a thought, a thought I
want to look.
How am I going to do it? I'll
get an idea.
The idea
is use
some kind of software or some way, ask
my friends.
Then a plan, I'll choose the right time,
this is where I'm gonna look.
Then the action happens.
They didn't get caught.
So they remember the pleasure.
Next time, again
and again
and again
and again, then it becomes a habit.
Then it becomes
an addiction.
How to reverse that?
Number 1, you need willpower.
You need to make that decision. Make wudu,
pray 2 rakaz,
and say, oh Allah, I have made the
decision to work on myself,
assist me and help me with your support.
So you gotta make the decision.
Then move forward.
Think.
You've got the thought. What's the idea?
Reverse it.
Well, when does it normally happen? It happens
at night at this time.
Through what? Through my device.
Okay.
Get rid of my
VPN, whatever it is that I'm using.
Put
a, you
know, an app that stops these websites from
coming up,
and put your phone outside in the lounge
when you go to sleep and sleep.
The first time it's very hard.
But as you go forward, insha'allah,
sometimes you need support, sometimes you need to
talk to a friend or somebody.
And you can reverse it. It's not easy,
but you can. And the rewiring in your
brain changes, and that's how you find the
willpower afterwards. 1 brother, he said to me,
brother, I want to pray at the masjid
every fajr.
I said, it's a big task.
He said, how can I do it? I
said, start with a thought,
then get an idea,
then plan it, then do it.
He said, my thought is to pray in
the masjid every fajr.
What's the idea? He said, I'm going to
sleep a little bit early because my problem
is that if I don't sleep early, I
can't wake up. Next, I'm not going to
drink coffee, I'm not going to eat late.
My last meal will be 8:8 PM, for
example. Whatever he did, he knew himself.
He planned for it. Then he woke up,
first time was out, second time was out.
Now, I played with his brain as well.
Studying neuroplasticity, you've got to help him a
bit. So I said to him, I just
gave him a number, I just gave him
any number, I said, it'll take you 40
days.
Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong, I just
said 40 days.
The brother, after 40 days,
went to give a talk in Sydney.
And when I say after 40 days, meaning
like 2 months later or 3 months later,
I went there, but it was that he
comes up and he says, brother, wallahi, it
worked.
40 days.
I couldn't turn back anymore. Till now I'm
doing it.
I said, maybe I should have said to
him 20 days. Maybe something like that. But
the point is, brothers and sisters, he reversed
it.
And it became a habit.
It became easy.
But you can't expect everything to happen straight
away.
It happens slowly, Insha'Allah.
Neuroplasticity,
your body all reacts to it, everything.
Childhood traumas
start with the parents and the way they
talk to their children.
Especially children
who have something called ADHD.
It's a problem with attention,
attention disorder.
And what happens is that we don't understand
it, we don't read a lot, we tend
to make it worse.
This this child truly is born with a
slight delay.
At the same age, they're just not as
attentive as others their age.
Now how do I know this? I'm not
a psychologist, alhamdulillah. I may be talking like
I am, but I'm not. However, alhamdulillah, I've
been a teacher for about 20 years and
in well-being and counseling for teenagers.
So I've learned along the way working with
psychologists
and having experience in this area. Reading a
lot, doing a lot of
workshops in this area.
We've come to
know all these new names.
And in the beginning, I thought they weren't
even real. Just pray to Allah ins to
shaitan. But in the end, I thought, no,
they are real. We've had to experience this
with students. And subhanallah, I changed my approach
in my classroom teaching.
Alhamdulillah, it worked.
One of the first things we're taught, a
good teacher,
is do not
jump to assumptions
about your students.
Same with your children. Do not jump to
assumptions
about your about your children. And don't compare
your children to your other children.
No child
experiences
the same upbringing
as the other as their sibling.
A brother, who is the oldest,
does not have the same experience as the
brother who is second,
or the youngest, or the middle child, or
the girl. It's like each one had their
own family.
Literally, if you have 5 children,
they had 5 different families.
The older child is is treated different to
the youngest one. The youngest one is spoiled.
Everything is cute.
The older one has a bit more responsibility,
that's
and the middle one is usually
neglected.
And then we come to
treat each one of them with the same
consequence and the same words.
It's very hard to parent, and Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala forgives us for our shortcoming.
But we do need to read more about
parenting and these new names.
So you have a child, for example, who
is diagnosed
with ADHD.
Now, before I say something,
one thing I tell my young brothers and
sisters,
my dear
my dear, and I'm old enough to be
your father for some of you, my dear
son, my dear daughter, my dear brother, my
dear sister.
Never ever ever
remember this, never ever
self diagnose.
Don't diagnose yourself as if you're your psychologist.
Just because you had a bit of anxiety
or a bit of depression or a bit
of your chest was a little bit constricted
does not mean you are sick.
The moment you diagnose yourself,
you create a sickness.
For a person to be that, you need
to be professionally
diagnosed.
It has to be extreme.
Major depression,
major anxiety,
major trauma.
Just because, you know, we've been through traumas
before does not mean necessarily you have post
traumatic stress disorder.
It takes a lot to get there. It
takes a lot.
In fact, the psychologists have created criterias. And
you know what? Ibn
Arazi
and ibn Sina, the great scholars I told
you about of Islam, they actually had these
criteria all set up, and they use them
today. They just didn't know where it came
from, but they built on them criteria
that, for example,
for a person to be diagnosed with a
mental illness, they have to have a quantity,
a number of things that are all happening
intensely at the same time. I think some
of them they have, for example, for
so let's say, for example, ADHD or depression,
they have, like, 9 things.
7 out of those 9 or maybe I've
got the numbers wrong, but let's just say
9. 7 out of those 9, so the
majority of them, they're intense, each one of
them is intense and they're frequent and consistent.
So just if you had 1 or 2
traits, doesn't mean you're mentally ill, brother and
sister. Take it easy on yourself and don't
make yourself sick unnecessarily.
And it has to continue consistently for at
least 6 months. Consistently.
And it leads to debilitation.
You can't shower, you can't go to your
work, you no longer move, you can't get
out of your bed, you no longer do
the things you are interested in. All of
that is intense.
If a person does get to that, it
has to be diagnosed.
So when we speak to our children, they
might have ADHD, they might have this, or
they might have that.
For example, if you don't know what that
is,
you might
say really bad things to your child
and your child cannot process it.
For example,
you always don't do this, you're always messy,
you you are rude, you're always cutting me
off. How many times have I told you
not to cut me off? But you see
that child's consistently doing it. It means you
just have to change your approach, even if
you don't know that it's ADHD or whatever
it is. Maybe it's not.
But change your approach. Don't keep doing the
same old thing over and over again.
And you don't have to know psychology to
do that. You just have to read a
little bit about the seer, the biography of
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
Example.
A young man came to the Prophet in
front of everybody.
He cut everyone off
and brought the attention to himself,
walks in, barges in, says, you Rasoolallah,
allow me to commit zina.
Let me fornicate.
Please let me fornicate, I can't handle it
anymore.
He cut people off,
came in and asked abruptly,
and asked the messengers, like, I said, about
the worst thing. One of the worst things,
let me fornicate, knowing that it's harang,
major sin.
Now everyone around did the typical thing that
we all do. They frowned at him. They
were angry. If it wasn't for the messenger,
salaam, being there, they were all gonna jump
him. And his family who were there as
well.
How dare you? Where's your shame? Now, a
person he he could have had something like
ADHD. I don't know.
But how did the prophet
deal with it?
He stayed calm.
Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam told him words
that the guy
felt that he was validated for his feelings,
that he's frustrated.
He can't help it.
Farasul sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said sit,
sat down, calmed him down and said,
what you're asking me for, would you like
it for your mother?
Would you like me to tell your mother
she can do the same thing? I said,
nah, hosbu bina You Rasool Allah. So what
about your sister? If she came to me
and asked me, would you like me to
tell your sister she can do the same
thing? I said, No, You Rasoolullah. I said,
what about your auntie? And he started to
bring her so close to home that he
became
disgusted with
himself. And then he said, well,
if I allow you,
it means I'm allowing someone else's sister like
your sister to do the same with you
or some other mother like your mother to
do the same with you. It's it's like
what I'm doing.
But but the way Rasul, a s a
s a s a l a s approached
him
was more important than the things he said.
Do you understand?
And he could listen.
He said, wallahi, I never saw anybody speak
in such compassion, my.
Another one, another example, a man was an
alcoholic. He had an addiction.
I I forgot his name. It could have
been Allahu'ala, forgive me, you Allah, but it
could have been someone like a Noaiman,
these are the names that come to me,
or Abu Jundub.
Al Ansari radiAllahu anhu.
And most companions were used to drink a
lot of alcohol before Islam. So this young
man, he came to Rasa Salim, he was
an alcoholic, he couldn't leave it. He
he he fasted, he prayed, he did jihad,
he did everything.
But every time he'd come back and say,
You Rasoolallah, whip me, punish me for the
consequence obviously,
punishing is to deter, and it was like
light whips. He said punish you so the
sin can go away. So he kept on
coming a lot to the prophet,
every time every time.
I've done it again. I I drank again.
Purify me. Purify me. Purify me. Purify me.
One day, one of the companions said,
has he no shame always coming to the
prophet, peace be upon him, like this? The
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam stopped him, says
latakul zalik.
Don't say
that
about
him.
Wallahi, I know that he loves Allah and
his messenger.
Now
could have said, yes. You're right. He could
have turned to the man and said,
aren't you shameful? If you love Allah and
his messenger, why would you come back?
Could have said all that.
And he would have been in the right
to say that. It's the truth.
He wouldn't have wronged him by saying that,
you know, like what some of us do.
Well, it's the truth. Sorry.
That's how it is. That's how I am.
No.
If you want to help,
especially your family and children, learn from the
prophet.
Instead, he went the other way. He treated
him the way that the man will listen
and help him.
Give him time.
The only reason he's coming to be whipped
is because he doesn't like what he's doing.
It's because he loves Allah and his messenger
that he's coming here. The other way around.
There's 2 ways to look at it. Anyway,
time went on and and the story is
long and he ended up leaving
alcohol because
after the death of the prophet,
the emir, I think it was Saad ibn
Abi al Qas radiAllahu anhu,
he saw him so chivalrous in a in
a battle.
He told him, I will never punish you
for alcohol. And he said, as for I,
I will never drink alcohol again because the
only reason I drank alcohol is because there
was a way out by being punished and
my sin is gone. But now because there's
no way out, I've got no way of
the sin going, well, I can't drink alcohol
anymore. And that's the same for people who
think of hurting themselves.
They wanna do terrible things to themselves because
they're sick of life or they've gone through
a lot.
And what Islam says is says anybody who
takes their own life
will be in hellfire,
taking their doing
the same act that they did to take
their life in Jahannam, in hellfire over and
over again. Why why would the prophet say
such a horrific thing?
What if the person is going through so
much? Yeah.
But that is the therapy, you see.
What is the therapy?
The therapy is,
oh, you who's going to harm yourself and
take your life away,
If you think you're escaping the problems, guess
what? You're going to fall into a bigger
problem, and you can't reverse it, you're gonna
be in hellfire.
So that person will think, oh, I'm not
really running away from anything, I'm just putting
myself in a bigger thing. Suddenly life feels
a little bit easier.
Suddenly, my life,
what I'm going through is a bit a
bit better than being in that.
And I know of people who this was
a deterrence for them, because Allah doesn't want
you to take your life.
Allah wants you to live on.
I want you to continue to help and
to look after yourself. There's still reasons why
you should live on.
Now, brothers and sisters,
I know I've taken up too much time,
but I just want to go to the
practical aspects of how to deal with some
of the
mental
intrusions that we go through, and here we
go.
What is
mental illness termed in the Quran?
So the best word
you're probably gonna find strange, the best word
in the Quran that terms mental illness is
called.
Now
is a negative word in Arabic, but it
depends how you look at it.
So can mean crazy or it can mean
a mental disorder. A mental disorder just means
that you don't have full control
full control over your thoughts.
And there are many levels.
And
people who go through that,
they are rewarded by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
for their perseverance and their pain.
Listen to the
hadith
Sahih Muslim, Rasulullah
said, any Muslim
who goes through physical
pain
or sickness
Or ham, ham means worry. Or ram, ram
means stress
and claustrophobia.
You can call it anxiety or depression if
you like.
Or other, or harm from people, whether physical
or by words.
Or any
sadness.
A sadness over a trauma in the past
or a calamity
or a tragedy,
sadness.
Even the prick of a needle
that just touches him or her little prick
of a needle.
Except that Allah
expiates
and washes away some of their
sins,
And nothing is
This means that when you go through that
bit of fear, bit of anxiety, bit of
depression, a bit of
and you are persevering,
Allah
rewards you,
washes away your sins.
So these are people who, insha'Allah, have iman.
All the prophets went through it.
It's called Ibtila. And the stronger the Ibtila,
sometimes
stronger the trials,
sometimes it means
the more beloved you are to Allah, Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
No.
The more beloved you are to Allah.
Again, it depends on how you react to
it. You can turn that belovedness into
something else.
How?
Patience A lot of people misunderstand what patience
is. Patience means you keep going, and you
keep wrestling with yourself not to stay dormant.
You wrestle with yourself when your desires and
your pain tell you to go and do
things that are horrendous and bad.
But you say no.
It's when it tells you stop prayer, stop
giving and
and trusting a lot, you say no, I'm
gonna keep doing it. You still walk with
the pain.
You still walk with the grief. That's okay.
You still walk with the trauma but you're
gonna build around it.
Example, if if somebody loses their their child,
it's I believe
it is
the hardest calamity in the world.
I don't think there's anything
harder than that.
Losing your child before you, especially if they're
really young.
But
Raul Suls alaihi wasalam did not tell us
to get over it.
And anyone who lost their son or daughter
in his time,
he would not tell them to get over
it or to try to heal. He would
give them optimism and support to grow around
it,
so it becomes a scar,
doesn't really
heal. Or there's a little hole
or something empty in their heart, but he
helps it to grow around it. An example.
One man used to come to the prophet
of the companions, and he had a 7
or 8 year old son. His 7, 8
year old son was called Hamamatul Masjid, the
pigeon of the mosque. Always there, everybody saw
him fluttering into the mosque,
flying into the mosque. And he would all
the companions would love him while the prophet
was speaking.
One day, the man didn't arrive, and prophet
said, where is that man? The companion comes.
Said, oh, didn't you hear, you Rasool Allah?
His son passed away.
Rasulullah
ran, went to his house, put his hand
on his shoulder and said, which one would
you prefer?
That your son lives on and you get
to see him and enjoy him growing up
until you and him die?
Or
that now,
there isn't a door of paradise that you
reach, except that you find your son waiting
for you
at that door.
Any door. And he's looking for his dad,
looking for his mom.
Which door will they go from, hopping from
one to the other? The angels help him.
And he doesn't want to enter paradise without
him.
And because of him, you enter. He said,
you Rasool Allah, the letter. I'd rather that
one. He said, it is yours.
He didn't tell him heal yourself and get
over. He says, look forward to to something
greater. Have hope. And the iman gives us
hope, brothers and sisters. That's why we say
iman it's not lack of iman necessarily.
Sometimes it's a result of sins. Yes. But
why? Why the result of sins? In this
world, you don't get punished
for your sins as a final thing. The
punishment is in the hereafter. What do I
mean by that? Brothers and sisters, listen.
Allah, when he says something is wrong, don't
do it. It's for your benefit. Therefore, if
you do it, it's gonna harm you. Example,
here's drinking alcohol. We know that the among
the 5 highest
causes of domestic violence in the world, among
the 5,
is alcoholism.
Among the highest 5 domestic violence in the
world.
And greatest crime is a result of alcohol.
Allah tells us alcohol
and gambling
have some benefits for you, but their harm
way outweighs
their benefit. Fazhdani bor, stay totally away from
it.
Now if I drink alcohol, I've done a
sin. But the reason
that I might suffer consequences, not because only
because I disobeyed Allah. Allah forgives, he pardons
Allah. Allah says,
Allah keeps pardoning you.
But
the consequence of that sin, the laws which
God created
from drinking alcohol, are gonna catch up to
you.
And some will have to learn
through disobeying Allah and repenting, and some will
have to learn the hard way. That's what
it means that sins catch up to you
sometimes.
Sometimes Allah makes you go through a little
tiny punishment in the world so that you
can wake up.
Or maybe to raise your ranks, or maybe
to forgive your sins.
In the Quran and in the hadith, there's
something called Sara.
Sarrah means epileptic fits. It used to happen
at the time, the prophet
And one lady had this mental illness through
which she used to go through epileptic fits.
So she came to the prophet and said,
you Rasool Allah,
I go through epileptic fits. Can you ask
Allah to heal me? And he said, I
can ask Allah to heal you, Or
if you are patient and persevering,
stay with that illness and be patient with
it, and your rank in paradise will be
even higher.
So she chose to stay with it.
You might be thinking why. No. This only
applied to her because prophet
told us something that is divine, unseen and
the Allah told him about it. But then
she said, you Rasoolallah, but when I fall
to the ground, parts of my body show
because I'm unaware.
Can you ask Allah to keep me covered?
So he said I will ask Allah to
keep you covered. And the sahabas, they said
every time she got an epileptic fit, nothing
of her body would show when she fell
to the ground.
Obviously, this shows us that all these mental
illnesses, problems, life issues, and and pain,
it never goes to vain, and we are
rewarded for it and expiated for it no
matter what. Okay. Last things.
So brothers and sisters, depression.
Depression is the is the biggest is the
most prominent,
the the the most widespread
mental illness at the moment in the world.
And as I told you, depression, don't diagnose
yourself. It takes a lot to have extreme
depression.
But it's basically a constant feeling of sadness
and loss of interest which stops you doing
your normal
activities. The causes are unknown.
But usually,
usually, it's the result of you remember something
in your past that you failed in, your
failed experiences,
let downs by others, put downs, bullying, failures,
failed expectations,
attempts, dreams don't come true,
stressful life events such as divorce, illness, bereavement,
loss of job, loss of money, etcetera.
And what happens to you is that you
start having
a low opinion of yourself.
I'm a loser,
I'm not worthy. It's true what they say
about me.
So you start creating these names for yourself
and these beliefs.
Some people even you start to use religion
to justify their bad thoughts. They say, God
must hate me, this is a punishment,
I make my dua, he doesn't accept it.
That means Allah is not pleased with me.
Maybe it's because I said this to my
mom or my dad, and they start creating
so many things which they don't really know
about. And sometimes they say my qadr.
The qadr of Allah is that my life
is just bad luck, kalas. That's everything is
misfortune. That's what Allah has written upon me.
No. How do you know Allah has written
this upon you? The moment you die, that's
it. The moment you're still breathing, it means
you have hope, there are doors, Allah doesn't
leave you.
Depression is to look back and think to
yourself,
what am I really worried about?
Why have I believed it?
It's because people told me, no, I'm not
going to believe it. And try to do
something that you're good at, and do it
good.
If you can achieve it, then you'll start
to break away those false
beliefs that you had about yourself.
Once I went to
with my little daughter to a park and
there was
a water slide.
Now, I was always afraid of heights. Always.
Who's afraid of heights here?
Afraid of heights, man.
So my friends all went on,
their dads went on this big slide.
It's the one where you stand and the
thing opens up beneath you and you drop.
It's scary.
Now I'm afraid of just the slide, you
know, that high.
I'm gonna go on, no. Anyway, my friends
went on and their children are cheering them
on. Yeah, dad's a hero, dad's a lion.
Dad's a this. My dad's the best. My
daughter looks at me and I'm just standing
there. Yes.
Just looks at me.
About what? Yes.
All their dads are going on dad.
And I started sweating, I go, oh man,
if I don't go on for the rest
of my life, my daughter is gonna think
I'm a wimp,
I'm a coward, I'm weak. And then I
started thinking, I started getting anxiety attacks.
Attacks. I started thinking, my daughter's gonna grow
up seeing me weak, she's gonna become weak.
Oh my god. Oh no. So I started
imagining that this is when anxiety is good
for you. I started imagining things that haven't
even happened yet.
So
got my friend and I said, help me
out, bro.
And I just bit really hard and I
said, I'm gonna do it. I don't care
if I swear, if I shiver, if I
faint.
Went all the way up,
he almost had a heart attack.
And alhamdulillah, I did it.
And after I did it, guess what?
I go, I'm taking on all the rides,
Every
ride. I wanna take on the world.
Confidence just boosted in me.
Of course I don't advise everybody to do
this.
You might hurt yourself.
I'm just saying that alhamdulillah,
the the lesson from that
is to wait to beat your anxiety and
depression is to do the opposite,
and prove to yourself that you are not
what you thought you were. The moment you
take those steps,
other avenues open up. And that is why
Rasool sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said,
plan, go ahead, rely on Allah and don't
become paralyzed. Keep going. Whatever happens, happens.
90%
99% of our fears never happen. Just think
backwards and think, how many of your fears
actually happened? Actually happened. 99% of them didn't
happen. You you don't think about them because
you forgot about them, because nothing happened.
Anxiety, brothers and sisters, is intense, excessive and
persistent worry and fear about everybody,
about everyday situations.
Fast heart rate, rapid breathing, sweating and feeling
tired may occur. The causes are unknown, but
it's about imaginary future fears
that don't actually exist. This is gonna happen.
That's gonna happen. Constantly worry a lot. Can't
can't stop thinking about the worrying. Constantly trying
to stop and fight it. Constantly aware of
dangers and uncomfortable theme
things.
So anxiety,
maybe write things and plan your day, organize
yourself,
and start to practice what you've organized.
Sometimes people like to follow a plan and
a timetable
to try and help your anxieties, insha Allah.
Finally, trauma and grief. Brothers and sisters,
know what trauma and grief is. Basically about
tragedies that have happened in your past and
they stick with you.
You get rewarded for them. And
grief people go through 5 different
cycles.
I call them the the storm,
the stormy cycles.
The first one is denial and shock,
then anger,
or both at the same time. That happened
to Umar ibn Khattab radiAllahu anhu when prophet
died.
He said, no, he didn't die.
He's like Moses, he went to his Lord
to speak to him. He's coming back.
Anyone who says he died, I'll strike his
neck.
So anger and shock, denial.
It exists.
The other cycle is
negotiation.
Dua,
I pray tahajjudulma,
You Rabbi, get rid of it for me.
I won't do that again. Just negotiation.
Some people do it when they wanna get
married,
so they hold on to istikhara and they
create their own expectations about istikhara.
I said this in my Europe tour.
One brother said to me,
brother, I made istikhara
for this particular
sister.
She was marriage material.
And when I went outside,
I saw her name in the clouds.
I knew this guy is just emotionally driven.
He's not thinking straight because he told me
this sister wasn't good for him, and he
is just he's not really thinking straight. I
knew he wasn't.
So I looked at the cloud and I
go, bro,
I can see
shepard. So
this is called
religious delusion.
People can get religiously delusional.
They use their religion and they create imaginary
things in their heads, and that is why
Tawhid is important and shirk is a problem.
Some people believe in star signs and tarot
readings and fortune tellers and the blue eye
and
astrology, and
they believe in certain spiritual things that Allah
and his messenger never taught us. That creates
severe mental illnesses, man.
And you go through another cycle called depression,
finally acceptance.
The quicker you move through them and the
more support you have, insha'Allah, you get through
it. Finally, you live with pain, you live
with a slight emptiness, but insha'Allah, you can
cope.
Finally, and very importantly, brothers and sisters,
yes,
anybody who is struggling
with mental
issues that have gone on for a while,
I urge you
with all the advice that I have
to truly ask
and seek
support and professional help.
There are lots of Muslim psychologists, alhamdulillah,
if you don't trust the others,
just ask around,
Go to the Masjid and ask if you
don't know. Ask family.
Look them up. Call.
Go and get professional help.
They can help you.
Insha'Allah
or
or assist you along with your iman and
your religious practice.
May Allah
keep you and all of us protected.
Amen.
Now brothers and sisters, I've talked a lot.
I think Insha'Allah this will suffice.
I ask Allah to
relieve and help and support
anyone who is going through any kind
of hardship, mental, physical, spiritual.
I ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to relieve
your pain and assist you and myself.
May Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala assist and relieve
the pain of our brothers and sisters in
Gaza
and all those children. SubhanAllah. What kind of
lives they will grow up with. May Allah
send the most compassionate and merciful to them,
Amin, and make them leaders among the righteous.
Brother, that's a very good question. Brother Bilal.
So he says, do you know how I
said that
sometimes you start thinking what have I done
wrong in the past, this is why it's
happening to me? But then you ask, but
isn't it good to reflect upon our mistakes?
Yes, of course.
Yes, of
course. There is a healthy way and an
unhealthy way. The unhealthy way is when
you're being irrational, there's nothing you can do
about it.
You know what you did as a mistake,
so now you move forward.
But if I continue to go back on
it, and still live in my past,
as if somehow
I can still change it,
that becomes an illness,
a problem.
And that is why the Quran, Allah continues
to tell you, move forward,
repent to Allah,
ask him for support.
And a beautiful verse in the Quran is
in Surah Al Hadid.
We tell you this Allah gives a whole
example and says, we tell you this so
that you do not
despair
and feel
hard heartened
about the opportunities that passed you,
and you don't get boastful over what came
to you.
Now we understood that. Reflecting on your mistake,
learning from it is excellent.
Our Mu'min is sensitive.
Accountability is very important.
But you take the lesson
and you move forward. You forgive yourself and
ask Allah to forgive you. That's healthy.
No. Brother is asking, correct me if I
understood your question. It's about the evil eye.
We know that it's true. It's in the
Quran. Correct. It's in the hadith. Correct.
So there is reality to the evil eye.
Number 2,
should we
tell someone about
our achievements or should we fear that they're
going to give us jealousy and the evil
eye? What should we do? Is that your
question? Very good, brother. Both. This is what
we do. First of all, first of all,
the occurrence of the evil eye is misunderstood
by a lot of people. And some people
have quoted for me hadiths
that in the future, there'll be more evil
eye widespread. The hadith is weak. In fact,
it's very weak.
So it's hadith.
So don't hold on to the hadith if
you come across it that in the future,
there'll be more widespread evil eyes. The hadith
is weak. In fact, it is very weak
in its chain. That's number 1. Number 2,
the occurrences of the evil eye. And I've
said this before, and some people disagreed with
me. I don't know why. They just wanna
make it harder on themselves.
You akhid, sister, brother,
the evil eye is not very common.
They say, no, it is very common. Habibi,
what's common is that you think it is.
That's what's common. It's this paranoia that we
have.
The evil eye is not that common.
We make it common. And this is where
the delusion starts to come in.
Now how do I know that there is
an evil eye? It's very, very clear.
The evil eye is very clear.
And we have the example, the hadith, it's
authentic. I just forgot in which source it's
from, but it's authentic 100, but I'm very
certain about that. When Rasool sallalahu alaihi
was brought with a man,
a Sahabi,
who had just come out of a a
lake
or was it a river of some kind,
and he had his shirt off, the top
shirt.
And one other Sahabi, we even know his
name in the hadith,
he looked at him with open eyes and
said,
Wow.
Not even the skin of an untouched woman
inside of her oasis.
Oasis. So he was so amazed by his
skin.
And somehow, subhanallah, the man fell to the
ground
immediately.
Started getting fevers,
started shivering,
started having fits,
started going unconscious in and out, and could
not get up and walk anymore.
Look at him, he's and saw him, he
was completely gone.
So he told them the said, do do
you suspect anyone? He says, yes. He said
it in public. So he got him and,
I forgot what the the exact,
the exact
treatment he did. I think he got him
to make with water or something like that.
I I don't remember exactly.
Rusul. He got the man to do Rusul.
Well, I don't know. Are you sure? But
you for example, maybe maybe a brother
over there is saying,
he made him do Rusul
water and then he said put the water
pour the water over the sick person
and recite this and that.
So there's a dua that we say.
And,
he was cured.
Now if you realize
the occurrence of that is very rare, We
hardly hear about it in the seerah, in
the biographer of Saasanna, in the hadith. This
only occurred once we hear about it, or
maybe twice.
And in as far as I read in
all the seerah of the khulafa the khulafa,
maybe 30
something years,
we hardly ever got maybe 1 or 2
reports of the evil eye.
So I believe that the evil eye is
a combination of its reality, which is very
rare, and us being too paranoid about it.
And I hear a lot of Muslims, when
it comes to the evil eye, somehow it's
the most in the Muslim community.
Why?
I've seen a lot of patients like that,
and look, I'll tell I'll let you in
on something. I used to do a lot
of rukiah.
I don't do it anymore. Don't don't call
me. Alright? Don't call me for rukiahs, brother.
I don't do it.
Call Abu Ramzi or someone else inshallah.
But
a lot of the cases I realized, even
with possession and sehr,
majority of them were really more mental
and paranoia.
Maybe 1 or 2 cases were real, and
I tilted out, can't explain them, but very
red.
So
this is what you do. First of all,
get it out of your head. Say,
Nothing can happen to us except what Allah
has written. Rely on Allah.
Before you go out of your house, recite
the 3 quiz. One way is to put
your hands like this and wipe over your
body.
Learn the dua
for your children, for example,
recite on your children and get them to
recite before they go to sleep. If you
suspect anything, just recite Ayatul Kursi or the
3 Puls, wipe over your children and keep
going. But don't don't get paranoid about it.
You know, the amount of people who show
off their stuff on the Internet and the
amount of people that show up, you would
think people would just be dropping in the
millions.
But they don't.
So let us not make it more than
what it is. I I believe
I'm convinced
that we over exaggerate
the evil eye in Seher.
Some people, they do have the evil eye,
some people, they do have Seher, as I
told you I used to do, rupiah.
But the cases were very minimal, very small,
compared to the ones who really were.
And this is more of the cases that
I've been through.
Brother,
my car has been going through a lot
of faults this month.
You're happy because your car's whatever. Maybe my
business hasn't been going very well. Wallah, we
suspect
the mother-in-law, the sister-in-law, the brother-in-law, someone.
And now they're attacking people and they're innocent.
I don't wanna say too many cases in
case people are
Because we don't wanna identify anyone.
Wallah wallah, I even heard this and it,
I don't know, for some reason, My door
always closed, never failed. This time it's not
closing.
Is does it have to be evil eyes?
Why do you have to go to? Yaqe,
look at the lock. One brother, he was
making wudu.
And he had this paranoia. I've got the
evil eye, the evil eye, the evil eye.
Because he's thought about it so much, he
went to make wudu,
and he slipped
after making wudu.
Said, the evil eye is killing me.
The sheriff who tells me tells me the
story, he says, I said to him, come,
let's let's think rationally.
When you made wudu, was there what kind
of a flaw was it? It says tiles.
I said, okay.
Yamni, was there water? It's wudu pere.
Says, yeah, of course there's water.
Maybe you slipped, water, tiles, you know, friction
gets less.
And he goes, Wallah Wallah, you're right.
He needed that much to tell him.
It was tiles and water.
Someone's got the evil eye.
Sometimes we attack other people.
I remember that brother, at the mosque who
was looking at me funny.
He gave me the evil eye. May Allah
curse him. May Allah give him what he
deserves. Habib, Habib, take it easy. You're just
making up stuff here. Maybe the brother's making
dua for you. Maybe he's looking at you,
feeling sorry for you. Maybe he's
likes you. Maybe he loves you for the
sake of Allah. Whatever.
Maybe he's thinking of giving you his daughter.
You've missed out. Maybe he wants to marry
you to his daughter. He thinks you're a
great man.
His eye is different.
This is paranoia, and we we talk about
ghayb, unseen.
I can go on and on about that,
subhanAllah.
So brothers and sisters, look, I'll tell you
one last story.
This evil eye and delusion and making up
religious
divine things that really the Quran and Sunnah
never told us about.
And sometimes I get young people, especially when
it comes to love and marriage,
they do an istikhara.
Sometimes
a parent parent, father or mother,
doesn't want
that particular,
say,
girl for their son or that boy for
their for their daughter. No no reason. Just
we don't want them.
And,
the son goes and does his tikhara,
gets the girl to do his tikhara.
I've had this happen many times. They come
and tell me, well, we saw good dreams.
I wanna say something about the dreams as
well. We saw good dreams.
It means we're for each other.
So it's really just on dreams? You didn't
ask about each other?
You don't see if you're compatible?
You talk about your future, how you're gonna
live, where you're gonna go, what anything. Just
dreams?
Dream?
He says, yeah, we had good dreams. He
says, but my parents did it My parents,
they also did istikharam.
What did they see? They said they saw
a bad dream.
He goes, his parents didn't want her.
Other parents, they didn't want him. So of
course you're going to see bad dreams. If
you keep thinking negative about something, you're going
to see a bad dream. You're gonna see
nightmares, horror.
And if you look forward and you create
an image about someone, most likely you're gonna
see a good dream.
Alright.
So what do we do now?
One sister made an istikhara and said, oh,
sheikh, here's for me, I saw beautiful dreams.
But my istikhara didn't work.
Went to the brother, he goes, brother, it's
because I made istikhara. And I said, oh
Allah, keep her away from me.
Alright, I'll I'll reverse it. You want me
to reverse it so sisters can feel better?
Imagine
the brother said, I made Istikhara. I wanted
it, it didn't work. And then I went
to her and then she said, I made
Istikhara
not to bring him close. You happy now?
Doesn't really matter. But I'm telling you real
true stories. And for me, a lot of
the brothers would approach me, that's why I've
got more brother stories here. But of course,
what I'm trying to say, brothers and sisters,
is number 1, istikhara does not mean you
to see a dream. Nothing in the Quran
or sunnah told you that.
There is no evidence, not no text that
tells you how to see a dream. Number
2,
and I'll finish it with this, what is
Istikhara?
Learn this line,
Istikhara.
It is
to delegate
to what?
To delegate
your matter
to Allah
to manage it for you.
That's all it is. Delegating
Allah with your affair to manage it for
you, which means whatever the outcome,
be happy, alhamdulillah.
But it also means don't stop,
keep going and go forward. So the is
done like this. You like someone, you wanna
get a job or anything like that, you
pray your 2 rakas, you say the du'a
for istikhara, oh, if it's good for me,
bring it to me, if it's bad for
me, keep it away from me and bring
me the good wherever it is. I just
summarized.
Then what do you do?
Don't wait for anything.
Now move forward.
Go ahead with what you studied and asked
about. And by the way, istikhara is the
last thing you do.
First of all, you do your research, you
study yourself, you see if they're good for
you, you see that you ask.
And after you get advice and you studied
the situation and you looked forward whether you're
capable, you're compatible, whatever it is, the last
thing that you do after you finished all
that, all the rational stuff,
you do the spiritual stuff. Make the istikhara,
say, oh Allah, I delegate my affair to
you, here we go. And then move forward.
Bismillah.
Go and ask for her, tell your parents,
go and apply for the job, send the
email. Start doing everything that you need to
do. Then what happens is either it gets
harder and harder and harder on obstacles, it
doesn't happen, or it happens for you. Either
way, insha'allah, it is khair. Fact that you
did is tikharah, whatever the outcome is good.
That's all tikharah means.
I'm sorry I couldn't give you something more,
romantic but that that's it.
You know, that's how it is.
Tama?
No. Now alhamdulillah, you're more courageous to do
the things you wanna do.
Don't wait for a dream.
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